all revolutions are of the belly. while hunger is intrinsically a "gut feeling" it admits of nothing particularly admirable or commendable though it should naturally incite our sympathy. it's easy for us to sit in our comfortable loge at the world's amphitheater and applaud in hindsight the predictable outcome of thirty years and more of individual and heroic day to day struggles to little more than subsist in grinding poverty in the living terror of a repressive police state where simply to speak out puts one in peril of life. its quite another matter to realistically and with historical hindsight soberly assess the limited possibilities which await these attempts to break the shackles which inevitably bind millions of gruesomely impoverished and dispossessed individuals to the convoluted matrix of global financial imperatives. chances are that the once ignored and scorned canaille coursing through the streets of Cairo, Alexandria, and the Suez will find the exhilaration of their liberation a brief, short-lived, and passing tribute to the innate resilience which has allowed them to live, labor, and love with the innate dignity which is their greatest possession. in the meantime they await a most uncertain and perilous future at the hands of the same dark forces of oppression which have mysteriously been transformed into shimmering mirages of their deepest longings.
"Behind the facade of proclaiming democratic reforms of autocratic regimes in the entire region, the Greater Middle East was and is a blueprint to extend US military control and to break open the statist economies in the entire span of states from Morocco to the borders of China and Russia." F.W. Engdahl
belated postmortem:Egypt to protest against anti-protest law
The new decree-law issued by the cabinet yesterday draws the ire of activists and labourers who plan to take their objections to the street in massive protests on Friday Lina El-Wardani , Thursday 24 Mar 2011
The Egyptian cabinet approved yesterday a decree-law that criminalises strikes, protests, demonstrations and sit-ins that interrupt private or state owned businesses or affect the economy in any way.
The decree-law also assigns severe punishment to those who call for or incite action, with the maximum sentence one year in prison and fines of up to half a million pounds.
The new law, which still needs to be approved by the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, will be in force as long as the emergency law is still in force. Egypt has been in a state of emergency since the assassination of former president Anwar Sadat in 1981.
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